400 Boys and 50 More

by Marc Laidlaw

  The morning of the second day, we woke and marched, and that day was like a dreary dream. Anna could be carried, but I could not, and I wished that like our falcon I could fly aloft to take the weight off my blistered feet. Yet I tried not to complain, especially after looking upon my mother, who said not a word although you could see in her face that she thought of nothing but Ash.

  The third day dawned in horror. We woke to screaming and woeful calls, which came from somewhere we could not imagine. Our Father needed not caution us to silence, for none of us would have made a sound against the awful cries. They seemed to fill the jungle, echoing from every shadow. And as the sun rose and filled the dark places with light, the sound grew stronger, moving now this way, now that, as if buffeted by the wind.

  We crept through the woods, away, always away from our homestead, but the screaming trailed us. My mother wept silently, and Olin’s face was pale and our Father’s grim beyond belief. He must have known immediately what the rest of us did not, for it was hours before mother said, —It’s Ash! And he nodded only once.

  We did not sleep that night. Nor did Ash by the sound of it, for the sourceless, ceaseless wailing roamed the dark, ragged and full of pain. On this night there was no rain, and the clouds kept back as if agreed the moon should shine on us remorselessly. We cowered in a clearing and tried to rest, and as I looked up at the moon I tried to make my peace with it and prayed it would keep watch over us somehow. I did not know what other power to pray to.

  Then across the face of the moon, something drifted like a skeletal kite; but only the bars of the kite, with the sail itself all twisted and in tatters. And then I woke, thinking it was a dream, but did not wake, for it was not a dream. The kite drifted untethered, under its own power, and the thing that writhed upon it began to scream and beg for death and mercy. It cried out in my brother’s voice:

  —Father! Mother! Anna! Olin!

  —Jane! it called, for I was always his favorite. Jane!

  We all lay still as it passed above. Something fell from it and splattered on my face like a raindrop, a tear, or more likely blood. I only stirred to check that Anna’s hood was fastened so she would not be too frightened, and then not a one of us moved. I saw that our Father had put his hand over mother’s mouth so that she would not make a sound and betray us. And though at first she wept and moaned, in time she grew quiet.

  For hours it hung there. I could study every bared sinew in the moonlight. I could see how his skin had been peeled away, the muscles severed from tendons and separated strand by strand from one another. But I could not see how he lived, let alone cried out with such ferocity.

  Near morning, as the moon sank, the wind rose and the clouds regathered, and a high breeze caught hold of the kite and moved it on. Both sight and sound of Ash faded away. Our Father took such a deep, shuddering breath that I could almost believe he had not breathed in hours. Then he said only, —They will pay for this in kind. The sky above the city will be full of kites!

  Our Father took his hand away from mother’s mouth, then looked down and kissed her eyelids closed, and I saw how she had managed to lie so still through that terrible night as her firstborn hung flayed and screaming above her. Our Father’s hand had been firm inside his heavy glove; and though she must have wailed and wept, we remained undiscovered; and when I saw the blood and how the thick leather of the palm had been torn by teeth, I recalled her words when I woke in the night and saw the ax. I found new comfort in them now.

  We had come to rocky country, where the land rose in shelves of tumbled stone. It was deep in one of these crevices that we laid our mother, covered in the brittle yellow leaves of bamboo, with rocks chinked in around her like a loose-fit wall. Olin would not speak, but he worked alongside our Father while I held Anna and watched. Olin carried Anna the rest of the day, and she did nothing but weep inside her hood, but my eyes were dry.

  In the afternoon, we heard Ash again. This time our Father’s face grew dark, and he leant to his falcon and whispered something fierce that roused her. Then he cast her off.

  We climbed farther then descended into a shallow valley, which was comforting for the shadows it held. I walked behind Anna and Olin and sometimes lifted her hood just enough to tickle her lips with a blade of grass, reminding her to smile. I felt the valley contained a magic that had cut us off from all unpleasantness, for all afternoon it was quiet. But then we heard something I had hoped we’d left behind: Ash’s screaming and pleading. The cries came on closer and faster than ever. Olin cried out and took off running with Anna, crashing deep into the jungle without looking back. But I clung to our Father’s hand, and he never trembled but stared at the broken sky through the trees as the sound grew louder and louder. Then down through the leaves came his falcon, with the sound of Ash’s torment circling round her, and I understood nothing—for how could a bird scream like a boy? She circled our Father’s head and dropped a ragged, bloody scrap from her talons to his hands. Then she settled on his wrist.

  He held out his right hand so I could see the quarry. It was fleshy and clear, like yellowed glass with milky green shapes inside. It was veined and buzzing with botflies. And it screamed and screamed with my brother’s voice until our Father set it on a granite slab and crushed it under his heel.

  We looked for Anna and Olin through the rest of the day and long after dark, not daring to call for them. Finally, our Father pulled me into a cave among the stones, very much like that in which we had left mother. He devised a perch for his bird inside the mouth of the cave, though I knew it pained him that she had no room to spread her wings, for several times I woke to hear him apologizing so deeply that he wept.

  I woke to see distant light, jagged and raw, and heard the sound of voices, these not screaming but calling out with urgency, very brisk and efficient. Father crouched in the mouth of the cave, whispering to his falcon where she perched on his glove. Then he cast her off, and she was gone, with only the faintest sound of a bell. I wondered that he had not removed her bell, but I think the screams of Ash must have deafened him to many sounds. Then, still wearing his glove, father took my hand and tugged me quietly to the threshold, and as we looked over the broken stones we saw greenish fog creeping through the valley below. All sort of animals had struggled from their burrows to die there in the morning mist: marmots and rabbits and lizards, some still thrashing. A wind had begun to thin the shallow cloud, but it also pushed traces of the acrid mist uphill, and we hurried to climb faster than it could seep. His falcon charted our path from above, but although I sometimes saw her shadow or caught a silvery tinkling of her bell, she never came down to us again. And I wondered what my father could have told her to keep her away.

  As we topped the crest and came down the other side of the ridge, we saw a farther valley where traces of the mist still lingered. And this time, among the small furry bodies, were two larger ones we knew on sight, flushed from their desperate burrow. It needed no closer inspection to know that Olin lay there, and many yards away lay Anna, just out of reach of our Father’s sheltering hand. I thought of how it must have been for Anna, wandering blindly without a guide, never thinking to lift the hood without father’s permission. That was the first moment I saw the hood as a hateful thing and knew it was only by chance that my childhood had not ended the same way; and I wondered if without it she might have escaped.

  We kept to the ridge until we heard voices coming up from the valley to one side where a stream ran. Soon after that, I saw others moving far off among the bamboo staves, and the hue and flow of their garments reminded me of the three travelers, but there were many more of them.

  To avoid being seen we went down from the ridge and sought a more choked passage, where sometimes we went on all fours and sometimes had to wriggle like snakes. From time to time our Father had to pull me over shelves of rock I could not climb myself; he had taken to using his gloved hand to help me, so I could not feel his fingers through it but only the thick, tough leather. It broke
my heart, for it seemed he could not bear to touch me without the glove; as if he were already preparing to be apart. I felt almost relieved we were alone now, because my mother would have had no heart for this, and my sister not enough strength. Only I did miss Olin though.

  In the afternoon, we stepped onto a spur of rock like a stone finger pointing straight out from the mountainside; and I saw more of the world in that one instant than I had seen in my whole life. The land fell away below us, sheer above a rocky slope that thickened into jungle down below. The jungle gave way to a wide plain, burned and bare and grey with the look of recent devastation. Beyond the plain, in a smoky haze, were unnatural shapes that could only be buildings, although the thing they most reminded me of was mountains. The stony finger pointed right at this place. When I asked my father if that was the city, he took his eyes away from it and said, —Yes, Jane.

  And then he said, —I never showed you this. And I hadn’t meant to show any of you, although your mother knew, for we fled from there together. She carried Ash in her belly, while I brought nothing with me but my falcon.

  I looked closer at the city, and in its jumbled center I saw something that puzzled me for seeming so familiar. It was a tall spire, the tallest of them. And at the very tip of that spire was a curved shape that looked like a crook or a question mark, though it ended in a barbed tip; and across it was a slash that seemed to cut through all the haze of distance so that I turned and stared at the emblem on our Father’s glove and saw they were the same.

  —I have done all I can to keep you safe, our Father said. Almost all.

  —Come to me, Jane. Do you understand what we must do? Come to me.

  He stood at the edge of the rock and held out his gloved hand as he had all these days. His face was no longer hard, no longer the face of our Father. I could not see him in it anywhere. Yet I stepped up beside him, for I heard voices coming up among the rocks. I heard footsteps and scrabbling and harsh, panting breaths.

  I hardly sensed his fingers through the thick leather; his hand felt insubstantial inside the heavy glove. Looking out at the city, I thought the air above it was full of dark vibrant motes, and I remembered what he’d said about a sky full of kites. I was not sure if they were present and real or a vision vouchsafed of the future. I only knew they depended on my eyes to see them, for my father’s eyes were lost and empty now, no matter what they had been the day before. It was as if he had pulled a hood over his own head and now expected me to guide him.

  —Ah, Jane, he said.

  And then we took a step together. But his was one step forward, and mine was one step back. I held fast to the glove when his hand went out of it. Then I knelt on the tip of the stone finger and watched him fall until green swallowed him.

  Voices gathered in the air behind me and grew still. I heard footsteps settle at the edge of the rock. They came no closer.

  A shadow brushed over me, and I heard my falcon’s bell. I slipped my hand into the glove and she settled on my wrist in a flurry.

  I leant to put my cheek against her feathers, for she deserved my respect more than any of them. More even than he had.

  When I had made them wait long enough, I left off whispering. I slowly turned to put the city at my back. In the slant evening light, I made sure they saw my face, and I held up the glove so they could all see the emblem upon it.

  At the sight of that, they stared. Then they knelt and bowed their heads, and some lay face-down flat upon the rock.

  —I am Jane, was all I said, and all I had to say.

  * * *

  “Jane” copyright 2005 by Marc Laidlaw. First appeared online at SciFiction, February 16, 2005.

  SWEETMEATS

  At first little Hugh thought it was rats. Rats in the wall by his head, down low on the floor where his mattress lay. He had seen them often enough, darting down the hall to the kitchen, coming upon their nests in the narrow crawlspace where he sometimes went for privacy. He imagined their curved teeth gnawing away, almost the same stained yellow color as the crumbly plaster they chewed.

  His sister had always feared they would come in at night and eat them, but she did not wake to see if her dream would come true. Hugh alone watched and watched the spot where the sound was coming from. He watched until the wall began to tremble, and a piece of it bent sideways and opened like a little door, hinged on the wallpaper.

  Out came not a rat, but a little brown man. Very little, very brown. His head barely reached the lower ledge of the windowsill.

  "Is this your house?" the little brown man said. "You live here?"

  Hugh twisted and looked over his shoulder to make sure his sister was still sleeping. She was. The rest of the house was quiet as well; his parents often fell into a stupor long before Hugh could find his way to sleep. Some nights he never even closed his eyes, but lay awake with his head so empty that the darkness inside him and the darkness outside were exactly the same. That was very restful. But now, except for Hugh and this little intruder, everyone was asleep.

  "Who are you?" Hugh whispered.

  "I asked you a question."

  "I'm sleeping in it, aren't I?"

  "Right," said the little man, and turned to peer back at the hole he'd made. “You won't fit through this."

  "Why would I want to?"

  "We need to get you out of here, under the house. Right away."

  "Keep your voice down,” Hugh said, “you'll wake my sister. And I'm not going anywhere with you. Not…not unless you tell me who you are."

  "No names until we trust you."

  "You trust me? Why should I trust you?"

  "Do you know Mbe’lmbe?"

  "Umbaylumbay? Who's he?"

  "Foo. But it is not your fault you are such an ignorant child. If you knew the name, you would know that you can trust me. We have had secrecy forced upon us for so long, the world has forgotten us. Answer me this, boy. Is there another way under your house?"

  "The crawlspace."

  "You get there how?"

  "There's a piece of screen under the porch. I peel it back."

  "Very well. Put on your shoes and go there. I will meet you and then we proceed.”

  "I'm not that crazy."

  "You can wear your pajamas—it's warm enough where we're headed. But shoes you may need. Now hurry."

  Hugh plucked at the flannel pajamas that had been his solitary Christmas present, his solace on these bitter nights in the drafty little house. When he looked up again the flap of wallboard was swinging back into place. The little brown man was gone.

  Hugh's dilemma. For the moment, he was free to do as he chose. Surely such a little man couldn't force him to do anything he didn't want to do. It was up to Hugh himself whether he crawled into the cobwebby dark beneath the porch, or fell back into his pillow and tried to sleep.

  A moment later, the pillow was cooling and the sheets lay thrown back. The bed was empty, Hugh's decision made.

  * * *

  "Well done, little man," the little man greeted him from darkness as he scraped through the wire mesh. Hugh kept a candle stub and book of matches in his crawlspace nest. As the light flared, the man's pupils glared briefly golden like a cat's. “Now make haste with me. Our time is short."

  In the middle of the crawlspace floor, the raw dirt had been pushed up in a gaping crater, a mole mound dug up from beneath. Into this, now, the little man lowered himself. One hand thrust up and beckoned back to Hugh. "It's narrow here, but soon widens.”

  It was also dark. Putting his face above the opening, he felt a breeze coming up, strong enough to make the flame flutter. He expected the subterranean wind to carry a tomb smell, something as musty as the suffocating damp beneath the house. Instead, the breeze was redolent of unexpected sweetness. Cinnamon. Mint. The rich, dark, intoxicating scents of coffee, vanilla, and above all else, chocolate. The passage was crudely hewn by pick and shovel, hardly fit for a grave-tunneling ghoul, but the smell disarmed him. He dropped down easily, rock shards digging i
nto his knees and palms. The candle went out during the descent.

  "This way," said the voice in the dark, calling from the direction of the smells. “You won’t need the light. There is no false turn you can make. And soon you will see well enough.”

  He followed the scrabbling sounds of toes and knees in earth. It was hard to breathe, with his head tucked low so that he wouldn’t bang his forehead on the ceiling. When he stopped to catch his breath, the vapors that filled his nose and lungs were intoxicating. An intense miasma of candyshop smells: Licorice and lemon, caramelized sugar, a marshmallowy sponginess to the air. It was growing more humid, rich with scents to drown out the raw smell of the earth they stirred up as they scrambled. At last he realized he could see the silhouette of the little man ahead of him. The light was very dim and sourceless, and it stayed that way for the longest time, like twilight in a dream where it is always twilight. Even when it brightened, it could hardly be called bright, being only barely lighter than the palest dusk. And in that subterrene glow, he realized the little man was standing upright now and urging him to do the same. With his hand on his head like a protective cap, Hugh raised himself to full height, and found that the ceiling was now higher than he could reach. Their journey through the narrow passage finished, he wondered what kind of place he’d come to.

  “Where are we?” he asked. “Why have you brought me here?”

  “We are home.”

  “Whose home?”